Jan Eliot

Jan Eliot is the creator of the internationally syndicated cartoon strip ‘Stone Soup’. Eliot is a graduate of the University of Oregon Honors College in Eugene, Oregon. Her cartoons are exhibited at the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa and The San Francisco Museum of Cartoon Art, where her work is part of their permanent collections; the Library of Congress in Washington DC, and the Billy Ireland Museum of Cartoon Art in Columbus, Ohio.

Jan Eliot started cartooning when she was a young divorced mom trying to raise two daughters, working full-time to make ends meet and still keep her sanity. Cartooning about her life was therapeutic and soon became her passion. Drawing from her own experiences, Eliot’s work reflects real life and real people, with enormous empathy for any parent with too little time, money, or patience. Her first comic strip was launched in the Willamette Valley Observer in 1980 and was titled ‘Patience and Sarah’. In 1990, ‘Sister City’, her second comic endeavour was launched in the Eugene Register Guard. It ran weekly for 5 years, until the strip was retitled ‘Stone Soup’ and distributed in daily syndication by Universal Press Syndicate beginning on 20 November 1995.